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VoIP: There's No Stopping It!

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DQI Bureau
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This is the US Amundsen-Scott South Pole station, where weather conditions

demand endurance much similar to conditions at Kargil Heights. In case you are

lucky and it’s the Antarctic summer, there may be 250 people to cheer your

arrival. During rest of the year you will find only one-fifth that number.

Thrill- ed, are you?"

Wait. It might be an idea to read some more...there is no road-link to the

place. There is no sun for half the year. The nearest place to get supplies is

1,287 km away. The nearest city is some 4,800 km away. The only way to get there

is by plane and that too if weather permits. What’s more, with limited

bandwidth available, communication with the rest of the world is extremely

limited. All e-mails are censored to ensure that only business-related

communications take place. For personal communication, a ham radio is to be used

to patch to the phone system in the US, with sometimes four people listening to

your call.

Not anymore…all this has changed since Jeff Thompson, the network engineer

for the United States Antarctic Program, and his colleagues first tried out

voice over Internet protocol, or VoIP, in 1999. Compare this with the hostile

conditions at Siachen or other border areas and the benefits that can accrue

through the use of IP telephony…you will be left wondering why our defense

forces have not yet implemented it.

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Did you say ‘legal hassles'? Let us see what experts say.

Jangoo Dalal, head, enterprise, Cisco India, says corporates have been using

VoIP for some time now. ‘‘VoIP has been deployed in corporate networks for

the last two years and more, with organizations running their entire businesses

on this platform. Incidentally, VoIP as opposed to Internet telephony is

perfectly legal and allowed in India."

Adds Ravi Chauhan, vice-president, for enterprise solutions, Nortel Networks

India, ‘‘The technology of running voice services over packet networks is

wrongly misconstrued as VoIP, which is just one aspect of the whole function.

The other two aspects being telephony over IP networks, which is commonly known

as IP Telephony and telephony over Internet, also referred to as Internet

telephony.’’

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Mahendra Saxena, managing director, Sapphire Callnet, has this to say:

"The law says that you cannot connect PSTN or FXO to the VoIP terminal in

India. However, in case you have a leased circuit between different branches of

your office, you can implement it. The bottomline is that VoIP should not be put

on a public or shared network. In fact, unlike popular belief, it is also

perfectly legal to use VoIP in India if you are connected to an overseas

network. The only rider is no call should originate over the medium from here.

Receiving calls on VoIP is also not prohibited."

So what is VoIP and what is not, one may wonder. Though the line may seem

very thin, it is distinct enough to distinguish between them.

It’s all in the name!

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"A complete transition to

VoIP will take many years, especially for larger enterprises, but it will



ultimately replace traditional PBXs"

Vijay Yadav, country manager CommWorks, India

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Unlike Shakespeare, who thought there was not much in the name, technocrats

tend to christen their inventions and products more often on the basis on their

functionality or the basic principles governing them. VoIP is not an exception

either. While the emergence of IP telephony is often associated with the rise of

Internet itself, it is important to understand that that IP telephony often does

not involve public Internet at all–but rather only its underlaying technology,

the Internet Protocol suite.

Tackling the issue head on, the International Telecommunication Union, in its

background paper for IP Telephony Workshop held in Geneva in June, has this to

say: ‘The most important threshold issue relating to IP telephony concerns

definition. It is a generic term used for the many different ways of

transmitting voice, fax and related services over packet-switched IP-based

networks." ITU divides IP telephony into two major groups–Internet

telephony and VoIP–the difference being the nature of the underlying IP

network.

While VoIP and IP telephony primarily use private managed networks like

leased lines and VSAT networks, Internet telephony essentially uses the public

Internet to bypass the PSTN networks. Chauhan makes it clearer when he says,

‘‘The word ‘Internet’ in Internet telephony focuses on the transport

mechanism. It is also an all-encompassing term used to describe the gambit of

packet-based technology–IP, ATM, frame relay, wireless packet networks, and

all.’’

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Experts agree that conceptually Internet telephony is delivering today’s

telephony services over a common packet network like the Internet, and hence the

reason for storm in the cup of DoT in India. VoIP, on the other hand being

independent of the public Internet can fly without caring much about the

Convergence Bill.

Why the hullabaloo?

The confusion in India over IP telephony is much to do about nothing. While

people have been debating the issue for long, not many have cared to understand

the fine distinction that exists. The chaos has been further increasing with the

government and its agencies–DoT and Telecom Commission–not caring to clarify

the issue.

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Shyamal Ghosh, DoT secretary and chairman, Telecom Commission chairman, has

recently been quoted in the media as saying, ‘‘The government is willing to

open up Internet telephony, but only after three factors are firmly dealt with

and thoroughly examined. First, a ‘plausible solution’ where services may be

available to all and not just to people who have PCs; second, a ‘tariff and

license free’ balancing of VoIP services alongside terrestrial and mobile

telephony; and third, a ‘strong assurance’ that the services will not create

a digital divide.’’

The senior manager of a telecom company has this to say: ‘‘It seems the

government does not understand what it is talking about, at least not the

technology. Or perhaps it presumes that the country is pretty clear about the

issue.’’ While no attempt has ever been made by the government agencies to

clear this confusion, most of the government statements have been confined to

Internet telephony alone. A case in point is a recent government document that

calls for lifting of the ban on Internet telephony.

So the name does matter after all, Mr Shakespeare!

As far as the existing laws are concerned, the ban in India is only on

Internet telephony. This essentially means that no voice call that bypasses the

PSTN networks and uses the public Internet is allowed. As such all PC to PC, PC

to phone and phone to phone calls over the Internet are considered illegal and

liable for punishment. Besides, ISPs or for that matter any other service

provider who have not been licensed to offer voice services are not allowed to

do so services and compete with basic service providers outside a closed user

group.

Says Dalal, "From an enterprise perspective, there is no legislative

hurdle in India, as VoIP is perfectly legal. Many large corporates in India have

been running VoIP networks on the wide area networking (WAN) for the last many

years. Even the IP-PBX technology is legally allowed in India, and has seen

widespread customer acceptance over the last nine months.’’ Confirms a

senior DoT official, ‘‘There is no ban on IP telephony per se. There is no

ban on a licensed basic or long distance service provider deploying an IP

backbone and carrying voice traffic over an IP network. The service provider is

free to offer any type of application that is possible on a VoIP network, that

is, a managed Internet network.’’

According to him, ‘‘Even basic telephony service providers are allowed to

add IP capabilities to their existing circuit switched networks and BSNL, as

well as Bharti Telenet Limited (in Madhya Pradesh) are already doing this.’’

The Indian government also does not prohibit closed user group Internet

Telephony or VoIP. This means that if an organization wants to set up IP-based

intra-organization voice network, it is free to do so. It can freely use the

services of ISPs or any other service provider for this.

But is the technology mature enough, for it was only in 1995 that VoIP as a

concept was first introduced. Also, are we ready for it and what is the driving

factor? Let us take the first issue first.

It’s raring to go…



"There is no law that

prevents enterprises in India from using



VoIP, which is perfectly legal.


IP-PBX technology is also allowed"

Jangoo Dalal, enterprise


applications chief, Cisco


Raymond Keneipp, director and principal analyst, for The Burton Group in

Earlysville, Va., believes that the VoIP technology is stable enough to start

deploying in small offices and branch offices of larger enterprises. On the

other hand, Jai Dhar Gupta, CEO, Verette, the California based CRM services

company, says that VoIP is fully ready for prime time. ‘‘Our VoIP-providing

partner, Cisco Systems, itself has over 22,000 IP phones on its network

extensively exploiting the technology. Also, a number of large enterprises are

deploying it across the globe and the feedback has been quite positive.’’

Says Chauhan, ‘‘Yes, it is commercially viable with a very good ROI. But

the user needs to take care of engineering the bandwidth in the right fashion.’’

According to him, while VoIP networks with voice transport would function mainly

as hotlines across different locations the IP telephony networks over users

private networks can also be equally viable. Besides, with the kind of rich

services that it has to offer IP telephony can enable the users to launch new

services on the existing packet-based IP network. This not only means good ROI,

but also reduced total cost of ownership (TCO).

According to Dalal, VoIP as a technology has evolved a lot in the last three

years. It started off as a technology of choice for WAN operations that would

enable enterprises to run both their data and voice traffic over a single

unified network. The technology uses routers to break into packets the

traditional circuit switched voice originating in PBXs and send it through a

standard leased circuit along with data packets. This has further evolved over

the last 12 months, to now enable voice to start its life right from the

telephone instrument (IP-Telephone) as packetized data. It is then switched

in-premise using an open standards- based platform, like the IP-PBX. Such a

platform also enables a host of value-added services like unified messaging

(UMS).

Not that VoIP is a perfect system without problems (see Locks & Keys) but

then like any other technology it’s growing and improving.

…but are we ready?

"Infrastructure services in

India are substandard. Even when an enterprise pays for bandwidth, the

quality is bad, leading to packet loss and dropped calls"

Jai Gupta, CEO, Verette

Confusion and legalities apart, is the country really ready to reap the

benefits of VoIP, not to talk about IP telephony? ‘‘There is no problem with

the technology per se,’’ says Keneipp, adding that, ‘‘the problem is

more related to migration issues. Most of the existing data networks that

enterprises have, in India or elsewhere, are not ready to support voice. An

example of this is power (AC Power) to the phones. Today if there is a power

outage, the PBX supplies power to the phone so people can still make calls. In a

VoIP network not only do you have to provide back-up power to the phone you have

to backup every switch and router in the path between the phone and gatekeeper (softswitch),

very few networks have that kind of redundancy today.’’

Adds Gupta, ‘‘The current state of infrastructure services in India is

quite frankly still substandard. Even if a company is willing to pay for

dedicated bandwidth, the quality is poor in regard to data packet loss and

signal-to-noise ratio, not to mention dropped calls. Performance from providers

is spotty, and there certainly is no 24-hour ‘around the clock’ guarantee of

consistent reliable service from providers. Midnight to 6:00 AM is simply not an

acceptable time window for fast, reliable service for companies needing to

compete in the global marketplace.’’

Experts like Vijay Yadav, country manager, CommWorks, a 3Com company, believe

that while the quality of service (QoS) is pretty much manageable over leased

and managed networks within the organisations, it becomes quite difficult in

case of Internet telephony. ‘‘QoS is a non issue within a premise, however,

the same cannot be said about the Internet,’’ says Prof Ashok Jhunjhunwala,

head, electronic engineering department, IIT Chennai. The issue of Internet is a

matter of concern because sooner or later India would be relaxing its rules over

Internet telephony and that would pave way for other IP telephony facilities.

Also, enterprises already over the VoIP can then use the medium to link remote

sites through it.

"The key to QoS when implementing international VoIP" says Gupta,

"is the dedicated end-to-end circuits. For example, a voice call coming

into our Livermore California operation can be put through our international

private leased circuit (IPLC) with ‘fiber optic to the curb’ functionality

in our build process. This allows for complete clarity of signal, elimination of

noise interference, and outstanding 24x7 reliability with the client’s

customer hardly realizing that the call is being transferred over IP, let alone

over an international circuit."

However, the situation is not as bad as it may seem. The international VoIP

market is over $20 billion and the Indian market paints a promising picture. The

market for IP-based value added services in India are estimated to touch Rs

2,000 crore by 2004. No wonder then, almost all leading networking giants–Cisco,

Nortel, 3Com, Dialogic to name a few–have chalked out their VoIP strategy for

India.

While Cisco’s existing VoIP range includes IP-phones, voice network

switching systems, gateways and controllers, integrated communication system and

call the company also has plans to launch its architecture for voice, video and

integrated data (AVVID) very soon in the country. Similarly, 3Com has VoIP

gateway services and a total control multi-services platform which allow

carriers, network service providers, ISPs and enterprise customers to build the

framework necessary to roll out voice services on a mass scale. Nortel Networks

has Shasta 5000, a broadband service node (BSN) to deliver managed IP-VPN

services.

But are these reasons enough to dump the existing, reliable friend–the PBX–at

the enterprise level, more so with the price of long distance calls falling

globally as well as in the country. In fact, according to sources in the telecom

ministry, the government is seriously considering a huge cut in call tariffs of

conventional circuit switched telephony by at least 50% before taking a decision

on lifting the ban over Internet telephony. So has VoIP lost the cost advantage?

Why VoIP at all?

Building a strong case for VoIP is Yadav. According to him, ‘‘Though it

will take many years for most large enterprise to completely transition their

networks, we believe that VoIP will ultimately be successful in replacing the

traditional PBXs.’’

The main drivers for consolidations, he says, would be the new applications

and ease of administration.

Adds Keneipp, ‘‘There is no doubt that the PSTN will be around for many

years, maybe another hundred years because it works. That doesn’t mean that

the infrastructure won’t change. I think the backbone of the PSTN will

transition to a packet-based system during the next 15 years. The customer will

not see the this change, they will still be able to pick up a phone and dial a

number but the voice will get wrapped in IP and sent to the other end over an IP

network instead of a circuit switched network."

What this means is pure economics. It would be the single most significant

reason for both the service providers and the users to adopt VoIP. Besides,

there are a whole lot of applications that an IP-based system is able to

support, not to forget other parameters where it scores over the traditional

system. By shifting to packet switching system, carriers can significantly cut

down on their costs through optimum utilization of their network capacity or

bandwidth. What this means is that, they would be able to carry both voice and

data over the IP network at a far lower cost.

This saving in cost can actually be passed on to the end users, either in

terms of lower tariffs or value-added services. According to experts, the usage

of compression techniques, silence suppression techniques the VoIP system has

the capability of bringing down the per call bandwidth usage to one-fourth from

the current levels. Not to forget the fact that it is one of the most efficient

tools of communication over a managed IP network–even in challenging

conditions of Antarctica.

Perhaps, over the heights of Kargil where even eagles don’t dare, VoIP

would one day become the lifeline of sharing vital information. Perhaps then,

the country would be spared another similar war.

Shubhendu Parth in New Delhi

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